In the following verses the doom of Judah and Jerusalem is passed, and it is a heavy doom. The prophets were sent in the first place to teach them the knowledge of God, to remind them of their duty, and direct them in it: if they succeeded not in that, their next work was to reprove them for their sins, and to set them in view before them, that they might repent and reform, and return to their duty: if in this they prevailed not, their next work was to foretell the judgments of God, that the terror of them might awaken to repentance those who would not be made sensible of the obligations of his love; or else that the execution of them, in their season, might be a demonstration of the divine mission of the prophets who foretold them. They were made judges to those who would not hear and receive them as teachers.--Henry.